Our Ticks of Yum

In researching a lower sugar caramel for Amy (who left a comment on my site) I came across this recipe for Dulce de Leche - That's fancy French for Caramel

The post is from Mama Bel and she credits Bron with the recipe - sorry Bron, I don't know who you are or where to direct the compliments but WOW - this is fantastic!

IMPORTANT NOTE: I read the comments on the recipe and they talked about the recipe boiling over and it DOES! I thought I would be a smug smarty-bum and was oh so certain it would be fine if I halved the recipe, but nope - WHAT a mess! But I did find a solution.

IF you are patient - you can make the most delicious, not too sweet caramel that you have ever had in your life!!! This is a hard concept to understand for us Thermomix owners - patience! But it is worth it. As in over 2 hours!!!! Why bother? It is a beautiful, rich but not overly sweet, tasty but not overwhelming.

Basically - cook the sauce on 90oC and it will take a while, but it DOES happen. There are a few things that you do need to take into account.

FIRST: You need to evaporate nearly 2 litres of sauce into 500mls - that's going to take time - allow it!

Second: make sure your thermomix is set right on speed 4. There is quite a difference between 3.5 and 4 as far as the steaming is concerned (higher won't work as well as it doesn't heat up enough to steam - paradox)

Third: to allow the maximum steam to excape you need to have the MC off and either put the rice basket on top and keep checking it (because the steam blocks off the little holes and moisture is captured and goes back into the sauce) or leave the hole open entirely. Yes that will mean a little spitting and it is a pain to clean up - I rested a little crown of tin foil around the lid and that seemed to work well! - it let the steam escape and caught most of the spitting.

As I said, it can take 2 to 2.5 hours which means that you need to be around to keep turning on the Thermomix.

One thing to be aware of - how thick to you want your caramel?? I cooked it until it was thick enough to spread once cold as I wanted to make Millionairre's Shortbread. If you wanted just a nice caramel sauce, you won't need to reduce it anywhere near as long.

HINT: for a nice thick (when cold) spreadable caramel - I found it was close when I could start to see the centre of the blades coming through - see in the photos below

Just starting

1 hour in

Finally! See the tip of the blade in the centre??

This is a bit blurry, but you can see how it thickens after cooling - this is after I took a swip at it with a knife